Charles A. Levine entered the competition for a Orteig prize.
The prize for the first person to complete a nonstop flight from New York to Paris.
His Wright-Bellanca designed prototype aircraft, named Columbia, was ready for weeks.
The co-pilot assigned for the flight, Lloyd W. Bertaud, was displaced to accommodate Levine as a passenger. Because of this he went to court to be reinstated.
Levine got the order lifted, but it was hours after Charles Lindbergh, in the Spirit of St. Louis, had left Roosevelt Field on Long Island.
Levine's plane was still in its hangar at the same airport.
Lindbergh won the prize on May 20, 1927.
The following day Levine announced that his airplane would fly farther on a $15,000 transatlantic flight challenge from America to Germany and carry a passenger.
The pilot was Clarence Chamberlin, and Levine the passenger.
On June 4, 1927 The Columbia took off on its transatlantic flight from America to Berlin, Germany. Aboard the plane Levine became the first passenger to cross the Atlantic in an airplane.
However the Columbia did not reach Berlin, but landed 100 miles short in a field at Eisleben, Germany.
The trip was 315 miles (507 km) and 9 hours and 6 minutes longer than Lindbergh's transatlantic crossing.
Bertaud separately vowed to complete a transatlantic flight without Levine.
In September 1927, Bertaud's Hearst-financed Fokker monoplane "the Old Glory" crashed in the Atlantic on the attempt.
Source: Wikipedia
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